When Giovanni looked at that smile, he felt perturbed, alarmed, as if in presence of the supernatural; reality seemed a dream, and the dream-world reality; Monna Lisa, not the wife of Giocondo, the very ordinary Florentine citizen, but a phantom evoked by the will of the master, a female semblance of Leonardo himself.
Lisa took her seat, and the white cat jumped on her lap; she stroked it with delicate fingers, and faint cracklings and sparks came from the silky fur. Leonardo began his work; but presently he laid it aside and sat silent, looking into her face with an intentness that no faintest shadow of change in her expression could have escaped.
'Madonna,' he said at last, 'you are preoccupied—troubled about something to-day.'
Giovanni had observed that to-day she did not resemble the portrait.
'I am a little troubled,' she replied; 'Dianora ails, and I have been up with her the whole night.'
'Then you are wearied, and the pose will try you. We will defer the sitting to another time.'
'Nay, we cannot lose this delightful day! See the misty sunlight and the delicate shadows! It is my day!'
There was a short silence. Then she went on: 'I knew you expected me. I was ready to come earlier; but I was kept. Madonna Sophonisba——'
'Who? Ah, I know. She with the voice of a fishwife and the scent of a perfumer's shop!'
Monna Lisa smiled quietly. 'She had to tell me about the fête at the Palazzo Vecchio, given by Argentina, wife of the Gonfaloniere; of the supper, the dresses, the lovers——'